Joe Biden during the presidential debate on Thursday denied that his son Hunter Biden profited from business deals with China, a claim that conflicts with financial documents, assessments of Chinese corporate records, and banking information released by Senate investigators.
"My son [Hunter] has not made money in terms of this thing about—what are you talking about, China," Biden said. "I have not had, the only guy that made money from China is this guy [President Donald Trump]. He's the only one. Nobody else has made money from China."
Biden’s claims contradict corporate records and other documents indicating that his son Hunter Biden has received between several hundred thousand dollars and up to millions of dollars from China-based investments and ventures in the years during and after Joe Biden’s vice presidential tenure.
Hunter Biden currently owns a 10 percent stake in BHR Partners, a Chinese private equity firm that is co-owned by the Bank of China, a state-controlled commercial bank, according to corporate records.
The investment firm is believed to oversee as much as $6.5 billion in investments, according to LinkedIn statements from one of the firm’s alleged co-founders, Michael Lin.
Hunter Biden also acknowledged in an interview with the New Yorker last July that he received a 2.8-carat diamond, from Ye Jianming, the then-head of state-connected Chinese energy company CEFC China Energy, in 2017. Ye, a well-connected businessman, vanished in China in 2018, after one of his top employees pleaded guilty in a U.S. bribery case.
Corporate banking records reviewed by the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee earlier this year indicate that Hunter Biden’s legal firm, Owasco PC, received financial wires from a subsidiary of Ye’s company called CEFC China Energy in 2017.
"On Aug. 4, 2017, CEFC Infrastructure Investment (US) LLC, a subsidiary of Ye Jianming’s CEFC China Energy Company that listed Gongwen Dong as its director, sent Hunter Biden’s law firm, Owasco, a payment for $100,000," said the committee, in a report detailing the transactions earlier this month.
Hunter Biden, who is an attorney, was also retained by Patrick Ho, a U.S.-based CEFC official who pleaded guilty in U.S. court in 2018 to money laundering and bribing officials in Africa in order to obtain business contracts.
According to banking records obtained by the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, a $1 million payment was sent through a third party company to Hunter Biden on March 22, 2018, with a memo line describing it as payment for "Dr Patrick Ho Chi Ping Representation."
Hunter Biden has acknowledged doing legal work for Patrick Ho in the bribery case. He was not named as an active attorney on public court records filed during the trial.